Empirical Security, a Chicago-based cybersecurity firm, has raised $25M in Series A funding led by Brightmind Partners. The company builds organization-specific AI models that predict which vulnerabilities will be exploited in a given enterprise environment. The capital will accelerate product development and commercial scaling.
Kenna End-of-Life Creates Replacement Market
The timing aligns with Cisco ending support for Kenna Security, the risk-based vulnerability management platform founded by Empirical's team. Zafran Security raised $130M total across Series B and C rounds. Empirical's dual-model architecture — global Foundation models plus custom Radiant local models trained on each customer's infrastructure — fills the gap left by generic scoring systems.
Vulnerability Volume Overwhelms Security Teams
Organizations face over 48,000 CVEs published in 2025, yet typical remediation rates hover around 15%. Half of organizations remediate fewer than 15.5% of vulnerabilities monthly. Current severity-based approaches like CVSS fail to account for environment-specific factors, leaving teams unable to prioritize effectively amid AI-accelerated discovery.
Dual Models Predict Real-World Exploitation
Empirical's Foundation model monitors 18,000+ exploited CVEs in real time. The Radiant model trains on an organization's own assets, configurations, and telemetry to generate environment-specific predictions. This approach differs from competitors offering global intelligence feeds or agentic remediation. The company publishes precision and recall metrics, an unusual transparency in the sector.
"Global models can only tell you the weather outside your window. They can't tell you if your roof is leaking." — Ed Bellis, Co-founder & CEO
Brightmind Partners Backs Repeat Founders
Brightmind Partners led the round, following a $12M seed from Costanoa Ventures in 2025. The investor profile signals conviction in the shift from global threat feeds to organization-specific predictive models. The founding team previously built Kenna Security, acquired by Cisco for approximately $240M.
Exposure Management Market Expands Rapidly
The exposure management market is projected to grow from $3.3B in 2024 to $10.9B by 2030 at 22.9% CAGR per Grand View Research. Vulnerability management overall reached $14.44B in 2025 according to The Business Research Company. Structural drivers include regulatory pressure and the limits of generic scoring as CVE volumes surge.
Ex-Kenna Team Brings Proven Track Record
Founders Ed Bellis, Michael Roytman, and Jay Jacobs previously created Kenna Security and co-developed the EPSS standard. Jerry Gamblin joined as Head of Research in July 2026, and Dr. Ben Edwards was hired as Head of Modelling. Their domain expertise in probabilistic modeling underpins the platform's measurable performance claims.